Howard: WMDs may still be found
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said today that the Butler report on Iraq supported his view that weapons of mass destruction could yet be found there.
The commission found pre-war Iraq had no usable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that British intelligence was flawed, unreliable and incomplete.
But it would not rule out such weapons being found.
“I agree with Lord Butler it would be a rash person to conclude that they didn’t exist or will never be found,” Howard said in Canberra. “There’s always a range of possibilities.”
Howard said the report was good for Tony Blair in that it found the British government did not alter intelligence assessments of the threat posed by Iraq.
“This report is not as critical of the intelligence agencies and certainly not of Mr Blair as many people predicted,” Howard said.
“Whilst the report is critical, yes, of some of the intelligence … the idea that it was going to find that the intelligence had been, to use the famous expression, ‘sexed up’ did not turn out to be the case and in that sense, it’s a good report from Mr Blair’s point of view.”
Like Blair, Howard has been under pressure for sending troops to invade Iraq last year based in part on claims Saddam Hussein’s regime was armed with weapons of mass destruction.
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